Aftermath
by Velvet Underside
Summary: This is about Domino City and its inhabitants. Tea-centric. This also about how all that Ancient Egyptian magic leaves its mark on the characters we love. Question: Just what is Domino City? And why does it lend itself so well to chaos?


**First** _ **off, hello. It's been a long time since I've posted anything on this site. God, I still have work from 2012 on here. It is utterly insane how time passes. I'm publishing this piece to get back into the swing of things. To once again experience that strange magic I'd felt the last time I'd submerged myself so deeply into someone else's world.**_

 _ **But why Yu-Gi-Oh?**_

 _ **Truthfully, I don't know. I feel like the overall concept of the story is so conducive to all the things that fascinate me and the themes I want to explore (especially the T.V. show). I've wanted to begin this foray into a new fandom for a long time, and have just now found the time to do so.**_

 _ **So here it goes.**_

She needed more hair dye. The brunette was starting to fade from her short hair, leaving it as white and as brittle as snow collected on the edges of the concrete side walk she stood on. This kind of thing was always an _affliction_ to her, a careless means of exposure for things she hadn't wanted to be exposed. Tea pulled at a patch of white hair and then let it go. She didn't want the Boys to know how much their perilous adventures into the unknown had marked and scarred her. It was always like that for them.

Magic was never simple. Neither was its aftermath. But Tea Gardner strived to make things simpler and easier for her friends. She didn't want Yugi to worry, to approach her with trepidation about all the invisible scars she carried. She didn't want Joey to pry in that dogged, endearing way of his, always ready to challenge the ghosts of their problems. She wanted things to be simple.

For once, just _simple._ Even though Ancient Egyptian magic was everything but simple.

She walked down the snow-covered avenue into the heart of Domino City with a thick pink cap over her head and uneasiness in her heart. The city of Domino had always encouraged and cultivated all things strange and haphazard. For every brightly lit game shop and bustling fast food restaurant, there was a dark seedy alley way hiding its sins from the light of day. Had she been a more philosophical girl, she might've asked why. Why this vast, strange city? Out of all the places ancient history could have played out, why Domino, Japan?

Maybe one day she'd ask Pegasus. He'd brought the danger here first.

Or had he?

Tea straightened her thick winter coat over her body, spread the red curtains and went into the nearest dimly lit shop. From the inside, it looked like an old apothecary shop from ancient times. Glass jars of unmentionable things lined the old, dark wooden shelves. On the walls hung sharp serrated knives, small skulls (real or fake, she couldn't tell), necklaces of beads, plants growing fresh herbs in windows with whatever light they could catch. The only thing that wasn't both old and strange was the iPad at the front of the shop.

Tea inwardly chuckled. Yugi would kill for something like that at the Kame Game Shop.

She stopped at the front counter of the shop. Behind it was a woman with wavy, pitch black hair drooping down the side her face like spilled black ink, thunderously grey eyes, and a full slick smile. She was poised, graceful, sly. She looked like she could charm a snake out of its own fangs.

"Hello, Yajaira." she greeted. Tea tried not to flinch at the name. It was hers after all. It just. . . hadn't been used.

At all. Ever.

Not by the people she knew.

"C-can you not call me that? Just call me Tea, like usual. Everyone else does."

The woman behind the counter seemed to give Tea's request some thought before saying, "No, I don't think I will."

Tea gave a small noise of surprise. "What? Why?"

The woman gave a low, feminine chuckle, and answered: "Because it makes you uncomfortable. I mean, there's no point in fearing a _name_ , of all things, but you give such interesting reactions to this name being used. I don't supposed you'll tell me the story behind that anytime soon, hm?"

Tea rolled her eyes. "No. It's personal. Just give me what I paid for so I can leave, _please._ "

The woman merely stared at her with sharp grey eyes. Tea busied herself by looking at the painting behind her head: all swirls of black and yellow and red coalescing into a startlingly beautiful face. The woman had reached down behind the counter and took out a small jar of full of black hair dye. Tea sighed and paid her what she owed, and then left.

Domino, just that quickly, had become blanketed with snow while the neon lights of her strange city had beamed through it all. Just had she had made it the through the doorway, a low contralto voice had told her, slick and full of dark promise:

"You can't run forever."

Tea paused in the chill and cold and snow and shivered. She tried to locate the source of the voice, the person that seemed to know all her secrets. They couldn't have known all that she and the Boys had gone through or the nightmares that had taken over while they slept.

 _Watch me,_ thought Tea, and made the snowy trek back home.

* * *

Tristan looked out the window of his new apartment in wonder. It'd been a long, long time since he'd witnessed the beauty of falling snow. The weather had painted Domino unforgivably in a sea of white and Tristan could only marvel at it. He moved away from the window went downstairs to the kitchen. A warm drink would be great on a day as cold as this. He'd put a small sliver pot on the stove, and just as he'd grabbed the hot cocoa from the upper cabinet, his cell phone rang.

Who could that be?

Tristan checked his cell. _Mokuba._

What would he want from Tristan?

"Hello?"

"H-hey, Tristan." Came a hesitant voice from the phone.

"Hey kiddo." Tristan spooned hot cocoa powder into the boiling pot of water. "What's up?"

"Nightmares. They're everywhere. I just can't sleep knowing I was so close to the Shadow Realm. I'm having a hard time getting used the thing just being. . . " Mokuba trailed off.

"Normal?" Tristan completed.

"Yeah. It feels like any minute now someone's going to challenge my brother to a duel, not get what they want from him and _I'm_ going to pay for it. I can't go back to another dungeon. I can't get captured again. I just wish things weren't so hard." Mokuba said, voice breaking near the end.

Tristan listened to Mokuba recover himself as he watched the water and cocoa boil together in the pot. He supposed he wasn't the only one having a hard time getting used to things. Earlier that day he dreamed that the world had shifted right outside of his door into darkness. He leapt into consciousness and ran to his front door, convinced that the world had literally delivered itself into nothing less than Hell and that there was no way out, yanked open the door and instead found Domino freezing and white and busy as ever. He breathed a sigh of relief as he added the sugar, milk, and cinnamon. There were no monsters here. None.

How long could he hold on to that thought?

Tristan felt the air shift that morning into something electric and wild, into something that felt like tension and potential all at once.

 _Better not tell the kid about this._

 _He probably already knew._

"Tristan?"

"Oh. Hi, kid. I'm still here."

"Thanks for this. Really, I'm grateful."

"No prob'. Listen, I gotta go. I'll call you back later. Official Tristan business."

Mokuba giggled on the other line. "Oh? What's that?"

"You'll see." said Tristan, and hung up the phone.

He poured himself a cup of hot cocoa and dialed Yugi's number.

* * *

 **Read and Review please**.


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